Term · Naruto
Konoha
The village where most of the story happens is named after the leaves on a tree, and hidden among them.
In Otakana the clue reads: The Hidden Leaf Village's Japanese name
- Type
- Term
- Series
- Naruto
- Letters
- 6 · Normal
Konoha is short for Konohagakure, the Village Hidden in the Leaves, one of five great ninja villages and home to nearly everyone the series asks you to care about. Hashirama Senju and Madara Uchiha founded it together after a long war between their clans, a detail the story holds back for a very long time before it starts to matter.
It looks like an ordinary town with a cliff over it. Markets, apartments, a ramen stand, an academy, and a monument with the face of every Hokage cut into the rock. The leaf symbol on the headbands is a spiral with a stem, worn across the forehead, and scratching a line through that plate is the formal way of announcing you have left.
The name does work in dialogue. The Will of Fire, the village's stated philosophy, holds that each generation protects the next, and there is a speech about leaves growing on one tree that Kishimoto brings back whenever the theme needs restating. Every other great village follows the same naming pattern: hidden in sand, in mist, in stone, in cloud.
Spelling KONOHA
KONOHA is six letters, 木ノ葉, tree and leaf. The full village name is Konohagakure, where gakure means hidden, so the row is asking for the short form rather than the official one. Consonants and vowels alternate, two O's sit on tiles two and four, and there is no long vowel to argue about. Three even beats: ko-no-ha.